Personal Stories On Topics That Matter

For better or worse, our careers often define us. Few of us are lucky enough to find a career that fits our skill sets while satisfying our financial and emotional needs. Usually, compromises have to be made.

Over the past two and a half years since graduating from the University of Michigan, I’ve held seven jobs. Not exactly the path I had envisioned for myself after exiting college with a bachelors degree in sport management. Obviously, my résumé looks far from ideal.

Or does it?

As my cohort enters its midlife crisis, we are all constantly fearing for the rest of our professional lives. We’re unhappy for one reason or another – stagnation, lack of fulfillment, work-life imbalance – and those who came before us advise that we have a responsibility to hold steadfastly to the jobs we have for their steady income and stability. After all, we aren’t unhappy, so why leave?

Curiosity, exploration, and experience.

See, I certainly didn’t know what career I wanted to pursue when I was in high school, applying to colleges based on majors I didn’t know I wanted. To be quite honest, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life even when I eventually chose a major. Hell, I still don’t know exactly what it is that I want to do with the rest of my professional life.

But with each move I make, I know I’m getting one step closer.

So, here’s my advice for anyone going through this very same struggle: just pick something and do it already! The longer we sit, wait, and wonder, “toughing it out” for two years so that leaving doesn’t smudge a résumé, the less time we’ll have to actually find meaning in our careers and actually DO want to do for the rest of our lives. Take decisive action in your future: don't stand idly by and hope it comes to you. Say yes to opportunities, and don't be afraid to stretch yourself too thinly so you learn your limits. The perfect fit may not be the next job, or the one after that, but if we are perceptive, open, and honest with ourselves learning from our experiences, we can open new doors and move in the right direction.

Employers should be intrigued, as opposed to put off, at an applicant who had moved around early on, so long as he or she can logically defend the reason for doing so. There is a very specific reason I chose to leave each job I have taken, and I don’t regret any of those decisions for one second, because I have learned a tremendous amount each step of the way. That, to me, is more invaluable than staying at a company for the sake of staying.

I argue that the first years out of college (or high school) are the most ideal for discovering the infinite career opportunities at our fingertips. Despite the tremendous growth of universities and areas of study, our education system today still fails to introduce our students to the vast array of job possibilities that exist in our society, especially the more creative, artistic ones, and the only way to learn about them is to actively seek them out.

For those who are into numbers and statistics, think about this. The average retirement age is 61, which means that even if we spend the first four years out of college searching for meaning in our careers, we have another 35 years of hard work and fulfillment ahead of us. Seems like quite a small investment for a lifetime of happiness.

I am by no means suggesting we abandon ship after a few weeks of work. We should always give 110% of our effort in everything we do and give each venture a true, honest, all-in chance. Don't burn bridges, as you never know what the future may hold. What I am saying is that it is perfectly acceptable (and, in my opinion, encouraged) to try as many different avenues early on if a particular job role doesn’t work out for one reason or another.

Yes, we are a generation that will never be happy, but I think that is so because we are still playing by the rules of an older generation that has drastically different perceptions of what success means.

I have held each of my seven jobs by choice, and I can say with near certainty that I never would have found my love of food, desire to write, hobby for photography, and passion for teaching had it not been for this exploration. Yes, I absolutely realize the fact that I have been extremely fortunate in my circumstances, have had tons of help along the way. But the fear of change, failure, and the unknown is holding us back instead of motivating us to achieve our highest potential.

My parents have always taught me that no one can pay you enough to do a job you hate, and that when you do what you love, the money will follow.

I’m finally starting to believe them.

On Sunday, I’ll work my final shift at a bakery where I have grown so much as a professional thanks to an incredibly hard working, talented, and phenomenal management team that has taught me an incredible amount. I won’t be leaving because I was unhappy – quite the contrary, I had a blast – but in working other jobs I’ve found that my personal passion lies elsewhere, and had I not taken this job, and the six others, I never would have figured that out.

So, if you’re unsatisfied with where you are; if you’re feeling stuck; if you want more out of life; stop wasting your time, take a leap of faith and let 2014 be the year you pick something and do it.

My wife, Becky, and I have spent 90 percent of our six years together with one of us either underemployed or unemployed. We’re now six months into our longest stretch of full-time employment for both of us. But we are still dealing with the scars.

When we were growing up, we were told that the great Baby Boomer exodus would start happening at just about the time we were to enter the job market, and there would be opportunities for us that weren’t there for our parents.

This was a lie.

The Battle for the Job

We are still fighting each other in the great Hunger Games of life, scrambling for scarce job openings that pay us a fair wage. In some cases, we returned to graduate school: partly in order to give the Baby Boomers a bit more time to retire, partly because we were drilled with the belief since elementary school that higher education was the key to a life worth living. We left owing more than we can make in many years of full-time work. And we left unable to find work with employers who only care about experience, not degrees.

There were no jobs to be had.

We fought on. Job hunting is an all out battle you have to fight every single day. We sent out up to 30 resumes a week. Some weeks we had three interviews, others none. But we were averaging enough to know that the résumé and cover letter were working. Thank goodness we could at least open doors.

The Hassle of Recruiters

We would meet with recruiters, who are people that will try once or twice to get you a job. But if that fails, they move on without a call. They made sure we felt worthless. Becky met one recruiter who said her résumé was complete garbage. Becky informed him that it was getting her three interviews a week and that several employers had asked if they could use it as an example for future applicants. He backed off that assessment.

And why, now that I have a job, am I getting more calls from recruiters than when I was unemployed? Maddening. I am the same person now that I was several months ago, yet somehow they think I’d be interested in getting something I already have.

Frustration of Interviews

During the job hunt, you become Da Vinci when it comes to interacting with interviewers: you paint genius with your answers. Over time, it becomes a script you act out because they all ask the same questions you’ve heard 50 times. But the same script has varying degrees of success. The interviews that have the best outcome are the ones that are treated like a conversation and where human connection in the workplace is clearly valued. I crave these rare interviews. But those rejections also hurt the most.My wife and I learned that 90 percent of the trite advice we read on job forums was complete crap. We know this because we A/B tested every version of our resumes and cover letters and we used every possible variation on suggested interview responses. Nothing seemed to work.

The Bane Of Computers

Whether we spent three hours fine-tuning each résumé or spent that time sending a standard copy to ten openings, we got the same results: a computer that took two seconds to reject us for being unqualified. Absurd. I was found to be unqualified for the same exact job I’d been doing for five years (and earned national awards while doing so) when they were only asking for two years of experience.

We gave up on getting anywhere with Target, or United Health, or General Mills, or 3M, or the University of Minnesota. No matter how well we matched their job descriptions, their computers would reject us. TALEO is our mortal enemy, and seeing that word made us simply move on to job openings with employers who don’t use such a draconian and wrong-headed system that looks for keywords rather than a human being.

Wearing Down of the Soul

Over time, this daily fight with recruiters, with interviewers, with dumb computers, wears on your soul. You become willing to take on any job. You read advice columns with horrible titles like, “10 Things You Are Doing Wrong in your Résumé,” or, “5 Reasons You Blew Your Interview.” You can’t find any of those things in yourself and you still can’t land a job. But it must be your fault because all the job advice columns say so. Even though there are hundreds of applicants for every job, it must be your fault you weren’t the one chosen. Every article about people trying to find work has a comment section full of reasons why that person didn't get a job -- he stupidly got the wrong degree, she obviously has a bad attitude -- because lord forbid that anyone playing the game according to the rules and working hard comes up empty in the job search. There are now companies that take advantage of this mentality of self-doubt by offering you their services to fix your résumé after you applied to one of their fake job postings.

(I will say in answer to those who say you are doing it wrong that I did nothing special to land my current position that I hadn’t already tried a dozen times with others.)

You take whatever contract, temp, random work comes your way in order to support yourself while you struggle one more day to find a job, any job. After months of searching, you have switched from trying to find the right fit to trying to find anything. You try to overcome the knot of frustration and depression that threatens to overwhelm that voice that says maybe it’s not all worth fighting for.

Every day, you wonder if you will land your next job before or after losing your home. You wonder if you will be able to save enough to even file for bankruptcy if it comes to that. You wonder how to pay the $1,000+ per month in student loans for the degrees that no one wants. You wonder what else you have that might get you $5 on Craigslist so you can buy gas to get to the next interview. You wonder if the next person who harangues you for being lazy since you “do nothing” all day will be the one that sends you into the abyss of despair.

So many articles about the difficulties of the job market end with the exemplary person happily employed after overcoming the particular unemployment problem the article describes. The hero’s journey is so appealing. It’s human to want to end such articles with hope, yet they end up just working for the false narrative – that all you need to do in America is work hard and long enough and you will get the perfect job. Fact is you may end up having to take the first thing that comes along. And two months later the elation and new job smell has worn off and you find you are just in a different pool of despair, yet now you know how hard it is to find anything and are much less likely to even try.

Anger and Love

That’s the job market of the past six years for two people with two decades of experience and several advanced degrees between them. And we weren’t even fighting the stigma of being older or a recent college grad.

Here’s what worked for us to mentally get through all of this: anger and love.

Anger works.

Anger at the computers that match keywords instead of searching for people who can grow to meet any challenge they need to face for an organization.

Anger at having to fill out another online form with the same information that is easily found on your resume, and then reading how HR professionals have so much trouble finding people who stand out in the generic crowd that they themselves created with their forms.

Anger at interviewers who have you come in twice, take competency tests, and then never speak to you again except through a generic form letter emailed five weeks later.

Anger at the people who say if you don’t have a job, you are doing it wrong, even though you have done it wrong, right, and every possible permutation in between.

Anger at people who say they could get a job by next Wednesday, so what could possibly be your problem besides the fact that something is wrong with you.

Anger at all the people who have jobs who are so utterly unqualified for them you wonder what on earth they did to get them.

And love works.

Love for the person you have chosen to spend your life with.

Love that helps you to sit up late into the night with your spouse, finding and applying to new jobs, filling out forms, scanning networking events and job fairs (both useless) for the next possible opportunity.

Love that your network is sending out your resume to everyone that might have a lead on a job.

Love that you are doing everything you possibly can.

Use that love to get you out of bed in the morning when everything else fails and you can’t otherwise find the strength to keep going as visions of Don Quixote tilting at windmills flood your head. I’m not ending this piece with hope. But I can end it with some love, which is what every job seeker could use a bit more of these days.

In the summer of 2007, I left my hometown to move across the world and start a career in Muscat, Oman. I was a young, bright-eyed idealist excited about the adventures I knew were ahead of me. But the evening before I was to leave, I felt an overwhelming heaviness in my heart for those I was saying goodbye to. As I packed my bags (and attempted to pack my life into four suitcases), it felt like an out of body experience. These are my thoughts as I processed what it meant to leave the life you've known for a world beyond.

The light passed under the door, creating an air of uncertainty. "What is it about the certainty of being uncertain, the ominous feeling of closed doors?" she thought. Her mother’s voice, strained and soften by the solid piece of oak in front of her. "She is not without her faults." The voice drifted in and out, fragments of a conversation she tried to piece together. "A long day….how will we....I don't know if I can."

And then, the voice became louder, turing fragments into clear sentences. "She is not without her faults. It is wrong of us to forget."

She breathed in, a breath meant to calm but producing the opposite effect. Anxiousness, taking root, grew up into her throat. "I am a million fallen things," she thought. She whispered her new mantra.

At that moment, a tiny porcelain figurine of girl holding a basket of posies caught the light of her bedside table. A gold necklace around the figurine caused a spectrum of color. That tiny detail and the history that came with the figurine made her heart hurt. And oh, it hurt.

"I am a million fallen things." Her mantra continued. She rarely allowed herself to feel the impact of her decisions - the enormity of events still yet to take place. But during this night, with the hushed, strained voices and nostalgic keepsakes, she felt the weight come down upon her.

The decisions she made would create heartbreak. They were creating heartbreak. And yet, she could not take a step back. This was her path. And oh, her heart hurt.

This is an open letter to all the new, aspiring marketing professionals trying to make it in Silicon Valley.

Dear Reader,

I imagine if this speaks to you, the start of our stories will be very similar. I started my career in my early 20's. Like what seems to be most Silicon Valley residents, I moved to San Francisco, specifically from the East Coast. I made the move via a Kerouac-like cross-country road trip, reading the early 2000's equivalents of TechCrunch, LinkedIn, Quartz, and BusinessInsider, and feeling awe-inspired by the latest list of under-30 millionaires and five-year old startups heading toward multibillion dollar liquidity events. If this at all resonates with you, you're hopefully full of optimism, ambition, and inspiration, as you imagine what it will be like to make it big in San Francisco.

This is not a letter meant to discourage you from how you feel. In fact, this is a letter meant to never forget that sense of wonder and possibility as you write the story of your career.

It's a strange culture you're entering into. You will most certainly be told that the tech industry is the ultimate meritocracy, a proving ground for the best and brightest in our profession. And you will likely be told that in order to survive, you must learn to "fail fast" and outperform your peers.

I'm over a decade into my career now, and I've worked for some of the most profitable companies in the world and have led several startups to highly lucrative liquidity events. Most relevant to you, dear reader: I've hired many, many entry-level professionals, and I've started to notice something: you're being taught that the industry is all about making it on your own - that the weight of your individual accomplishments will almost exclusively determine how successful you are.

I recognize that many of you will thrive in that kind of environment - it's just your nature, and there's nothing wrong with it. But for those of you who will struggle in such an individualistic environment, I thought I'd offer some advice from someone who did, too:

1) Relationships matter: for some reason, nobody ever mentioned this during my four years of college! Yes, your boss will judge you on the quality of your work. But the best leaders in the company, whether C-suite execs or entry-level staffers, build strong relationships with the people around them. It's not just about making friends with the people you naturally click with - it's about learning how to build good relationships and find common ground with people you don't. You have a lot to learn, and you can learn from all over the place. Learn from experience, learn from research, but also learn from those around you - their failures and successes can be just as educational as your own if you really listen. Stories are a powerful medium for education, so please leverage them.

2) Understand what culture really is: having happy hours, a stocked beer fridge, a Ping-Pong table, or unlimited time off - these are all benefits that many startups use to paint a picture of a strong, healthy culture. But when you're assessing a company, look deeper than the perks. How does the team interact? Are they friendly, do they strike you as communicative, do they strike you, simply, as good people? What's your boss like? Will s/he take the time to develop you; will you be given opportunities to try new things; and most importantly, will you learn, not only from experience, but also from those around you? In such a data-driven environment, it seems weird to say, but your instinct on this matters - does it feel right to you? It should be an environment that you can be yourself in - nothing about those four walls of your office should change who you are as a person. If you have to become a different person when you show up to work, your job isn't in technology, it's in acting.

3) Be intentional: don't do something just for the sake of doing it. Don't do something while you're on autopilot. Be cognizant and conscious of how what you're doing impacts the bigger picture, and how it serves the team. I'm a marketer, and I see far too many younger professionals recycle the same jargon and clichés ("game-changing" and "disruptive" are two that come to mind - on that note, technology that disrupts the work environment doesn't seem all that appealing to me. I used to refer to Comcast Internet as "disruptive" technology). If you ever want to lead a company, you need to learn to think strategically, and in order to do that, you have to be very aware of the "why."

4) Have empathy: regardless of whether you’re an engineer, product manager, marketer, or sales guy, you're ultimately building something that serves an end-user, and that user's story and experience are incredibly important. Empathy for that story is even more so. Empathy for your colleagues, is perhaps the most important. Companies aren't made or broken on the back of a single person. As hokey as it may sound, the team's success is what will win the game. Having empathy for your colleagues helps you be a better friend when they fail; it helps you stay focused on solving the problem instead of focusing on assigning blame. I also think that it just generally makes the world a better place.

5) Find a mentor: the best lessons I ever learned were from mine, and it's a relationship that's all-to-often undervalued in the individual-driven meritocracy of Silicon Valley. I get my intellectual butt kicked every day by trusted mentors who have more experience than I do and are just flat-out smarter than I am. Being challenged by them makes me better, both at what I do, and as a person. You would be amazed how beneficial it can be just to have someone exponentially smarter than you who's invested in your success.

6) Finally, please don't forget that feeling of hope and wonder. If Silicon Valley teaches you anything, it's that everything is possible. If Silicon Valley fails to teach you one thing, it's that you can't do it alone.

The starts of our stories may be similar, but regardless of whether they progress through the same arc, I do hope they ultimately share a very happy ending.

Good luck, dear reader, in this new adventure. It will be hard, but it will be worth it. And perhaps instead of the "fail fast" meritocracy, you can be a part of a shift in our culture toward a "learn constantly, fail productively, succeed fast" community.

My career has been a mixture of Emergency Medical Services, bartending, and news producing. But not all at the same time.

I began my EMS career at the behest of my best friend's brother. I was 16 and living at the Rescue Mission. One night, he drove me to the Mission after a gathering at their home. He saw the condition of the homeless shelter and started to cry. He said I was too smart to be living that way. He had taken the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) course and said I would be perfect for it. He said I had street smarts and book smarts, and that I was emotionally tough when it came to the tragic things that life hands you. He handed me their business card and drove away.

I don't think he'll ever know how much that night impacted my life.

I worked as a waitress at a comedy club, as food server at a hospital, and did what I needed to do to survive until I turned 18. Then I found out that I wouldn't be able to work on an ambulance until I turned 21. Insurance will not cover EMTs under 21 and ambulance services will only make exceptions for paramedics that can't drive .

I became an Emergency Medical Technician in 1997, just 6 months shy of my 21st birthday. I wound up bartending at a small bar in La Union, New Mexico until my birthday. I met a few bikers and locals who made the time go by quickly.

I then received the call I had been waiting for. I was an employed Texas EMT! I was so nervous and excited about finally being able to use my skills and training in the field. For two and a half years, I served the county of El Paso, TX alongside some of the best EMTs and paramedics that ever graced the five boundaries of El Paso.

I learned that being in Emergency Medical Services is more than just showing up and using your skills and maybe saving a life. EMTs with a good camaraderie usually save more than just their community, they save each other. People think that firefighters, EMTs and paramedics have a gallows sense of humor, but they don't understand that it is a coping mechanism. We show up and start CPR on a 6 month old infant who had his head smashed into the wall because mom wanted him to shut up. Or a family that hasn't checked in on grandpa for a week wants us to bring him back when rigor mortis has set in. A drunk driver plows into a family, killing them all, but he walks into the back of a police car. There is no therapy or debriefing that can remove these images and emotions imprinted on our souls. What we did have was fishing at Rainbow lake by station one, practical jokes between stations 2 and 3 and company parties at Wet n' Wild. Those things made the rough calls just a little bit easier. I served my community for two and a half years before I needed a mental break.

I went to LA and tried my luck in the big city. I worked for a talent agency as a receptionist. My roommate was an agent's assistant for the adult theatrical department. We were two girls out on the town trying to find new talent and give some poor schmuck their big break. That's how I met my daughter's father.

My roommate and I went to The Hollywood Improv on Melrose. She didn't think you could find talent at a comedy club, but I told her that comics are the best actors for commercials. Their timing is impeccable and they are great at character creation.

My roommate saw a comic that she just had to talk to, not for talent, but for his phone number. I had to play wingman because he was there with a friend. His friend was wearing a black leather jacket and had hair like Brian May of Queen. We watched them on stage, and I must say, I was smitten. Rick didn't do your usual bathroom humor, his brand of cerebral humor made him even more appealing. After a few dates and some drunken nights, I think we both knew it probably wouldn't go anywhere. I decided my LA venture was done and headed back to Texas. A few months later, I found out I was pregnant. Getting back on a truck was no longer an option. Back to bartending.

My daughter was born and I moved back to LA. I was lucky to get hired by another talent agency, this time as an agent's assistant. I say “lucky” because my employers became my family. Neil, Sheila and Blair not only hired me, but they helped me outside of work. I came to LA with baby diapers and nothing else. They helped me furnish my empty apartment, toys and a swing for my daughter and even helped with baby clothes. I was and always will be appreciative of the opportunity and assistance that they gave me. They will never know how much I love them for giving me the hand up that I so desperately needed. Raising a daughter alone was difficult, but worth it. The folks at Commercial Talent made it even more accomplishable. I learned how casting works, time spans, head shots and BS resumes, and when your boss turns 50 and a random actor wannabe shows up at your birthday lunch at Spagos, you go with it...and take pictures.

After a year of fame and fortune, I returned to Texas to be closer to my family. Finding a job proved to be difficult and my daughter and I ended up in a one-bedroom apartment that was previously rented by a prostitute. Many a night I would get a knock on the door or window at 2 a.m. asking for Bubbles. I saw an ad for a website director at the local ABC affiliate, not much of a background was needed, other than enthusiasm for news and the ability to write. Before I had decided that college was not in my future, I wanted to become a journalist, investigate stories and tell the tales of the downtrodden. I took my chances and applied. I was amazed to receive a call for an interview.

The interview consisted of a spelling test: Condoleezza Rice and Arnold Schwarzenegger being on the list of words, geography and distances. Luckily for me, I had driven from Los Angeles to New York. The position was between myself, and a former news director from Ohio, whose husband had been transferred to El Paso. Needless to say, she was hired. The news director said he liked the way I wrote and not many people could pass the distance test down to the last mile. He asked if I wouldn't mind interning until a position became available. I didn't have to wait long before the I-Team investigator retired and I took his place.

My career in news sprang to life. It was amusing to me how much news producing was like EMS. Hectic, deadline-oriented, dramatic. And newsies have the same gallows humor as EMS people do. One day I would investigate "shady" landlords, the next day I would be sitting in court listening to a child murder case. I even investigated why the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission and the Sheriffs Department raid strip clubs and adult book stores at the same time.

There is a quirky law in Texas that states you can sell neck massagers, but they cannot be phallic-shaped. Neck massagers are sold at adult books stores, hence the raids. I had to reveal my investigation to the newsroom at our 10 a.m. meeting. The veteran anchor that everyone turned to with questions of journalistic integrity (who was also highly respected within the city) raised his hand and asked "is a cucumber still legal?"

I produced three morning shows in El Paso, had a short stint as a news writer in LA, then I went on to Fort Myers, Florida. I realized that news was starting to change. I had an executive producer order me to drop a story about five soldiers killed in Afghanistan to the "B" block and move a story on Brittney Spears appearing in court the following week to the "A" block. What I once thought was important for the viewer to know, no longer mattered. Instant gratification and sensationalized news became more the norm than the investigative news I’d produced when I started. I no longer looked forward to going in; it became a job instead of work. I hoped that moving to Las Vegas would change my opinion of the state of news and journalism. I think by the time I arrived, I was so burnt, I just wanted out.

I have been on an ambulance since I left news six years ago. I enjoyed my time on an ambulance in New Jersey, then made my way back home to Texas. I decided that was the time to obtain my paramedic license. There is a $20,000 difference in the cost of school from New Jersey to Texas. As a single mother, I felt saving $17,800 was a good idea.

I went from Emergency Medical Technician to EMS Liaison in the five years that I have been back in Texas. I maintained the relationships between five emergency departments and the first responders and emergency personnel in the west Texas region and southern New Mexico. I educated and accomplished many difficult feats, but with the economy and the uncertainty of health insurance and the Affordable Care Act, there were many lay offs, myself included.

My position at the hospital was eliminated in November, and yes, I received a two-week severance package and am now collecting unemployment. I'd rather be working. The job market everywhere is horrible, but in El Paso, it's ten times worse. I could jump back on an ambulance, but I can no longer afford to make $9 an hour. Between the rent, my car payment, supporting the kiddo and life, I can't afford to spend 12 hours on an ambulance to not make ends meet. The man who hired me for the hospital network knew that I not only had the connections of an EMT ground pounder, but the contacts from my tenure in the world of news. Why am I telling you all this? Because even with all the experience and knowledge in my noggin, I still can't find a job.

I have been on interviews where I have been told that I am overqualified, under-educated, and (so far my favorite) that I'd get bored. I continue to search, but nothing. I send out at least one resume a day, hoping something sticks. I was frustrated at first, but luckily, I have a fiancée who is supportive and understanding. It has made this endeavor easier. My first job was at the age of 15 at a pizza parlor, I am not accustomed to unemployment. It's scary not knowing if this is temporary or if we will have to leave this city to find a job.

I am appreciating this time that I can drop off and pick up my daughter at school, help her with her homework and science projects, go on hikes and road trips, and sometimes just camp out in the living room and giggle. The first 10 years of her life, I was her mother, father, caretaker and provider. Right now I am able to do the things with her that I did not have time to do before. I am taking this opportunity to study for my paramedic test. I volunteer my time with the fire department and the Drowning Prevention Coalition so that I don't go stir crazy at home. I no longer have an excuse for an untidy home or not going to the gym. Once I pass my paramedic test, the job search will change and the income will come back into play. But until then, this is strange for me. I am not hopeless. I guess there is something better waiting out there for me.

In the 10 years since I graduated from college, I’ve had the same conversation hundreds of times:

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m an engineer/a lawyer/a pharmacist/an analyst at [insert name of large bank here].”

“Oh, cool! Do you like it?”

[shrug] “It’s work.”

Or maybe:

“Not really, but… I guess it’s okay for now….”

Or maybe just:

“No.”

I’ve had this conversation so many times that I feel like this problem is epidemic: So many Asian Americans I know have great jobs. So few of them enjoy their work.

I’ve dubbed this the Asian American Quarter-Life Crisis: intelligent and hard-working twenty- and thirtysomethings in stable, well-paying jobs that they detest but don’t leave.

If the conversation continues (and often it doesn’t, because the other person is depressed by it or just doesn’t want to talk about it), the reasons for staying in the job are sometimes predictable. “It pays the bills.” “The economy is crap.” But what I hear most often is this: “I don’t know what else I would do.”

***

Working a job that you don’t like isn’t unique to Asian Americans, obviously — it’s a problem so common that complaining about it is cliche. But I think this issue is especially pervasive in Asian American communities. For one, Asian cultures tend to be risk-averse, to value knowing your place and not rocking the boat. On top of that, our parents came to this country for the sake of financial security and stability, and they inculcated us with the same values. Most of us have been raised to think about our futures for as long as we can remember. It starts with math workbooks. Gifted summer camps. Endless SAT prep. All for the sake of fabulous college applications, which lead us to the best universities. The best internships. The best (read: most lucrative, most prestigious, most stable) careers, which usually fall somewhere in the vicinity of medicine, law, engineering, and (corporate) business.

In midst of all this striving for the best, there’s little to no attention paid to what we might actually enjoy. That would be indulgent, if not completely unheard of. There’s little concern in Asian cultures for personal strengths and weaknesses; there’s no such thing as someone who’s “not a math person” or “not an science person,” because excellence in any area can be attained through hard work. There’s nothing that can’t be achieved through more repetitions or more discipline. Failure to excel at something is not attributed to our unique dispositions; it’s attributed solely to laziness or lack of effort, and that is unacceptable. As a result, we’re trained to excel at everything. We become excellent at jumping through hoops and knocking down any task that’s placed before us. That’s what we end up enjoying, at least while we’re in school. These are not terrible skills to have, mind you. But the flip side is that as we’re trained be great at everything, there’s very little attention paid to what among those things we actually like. Generally speaking, this is not on our parents’ radars at all, and as a result, it goes neglected on ours.

The result of all of this: a generation of Asian Americans who are excellent at achieving but have no idea what they want to do. (Or, if they do know, are reluctant to pursue it because it isn’t as stable or well-paid as their current jobs.) A generation that is incredibly successful but, professionally speaking, not terribly happy.

Not to say that there aren’t Asian Americans who, in the midst of racking up achievements, figured out and pursued what interested them. And there are certainly Asian parents who are exceptions to the rule, who are actually interested in what their children want to do and support them regardless. I have Asian American friends who are graphic designers, actors, community activists; who are rethinking math pedagogy for Teach for America and doing campus ministry; and yes, even a few who enjoy being doctors and programmers and brand managers. Their numbers, however, are dwarfed by the scores of Asian Americans I know who would be much happier in other fields — engineers who should be teachers and filmmakers, lawyers who should be writers, doctors who should be chefs. And, of course, those who have no idea what they should be doing.

Also, I’m not trying to invalidate or trivialize how difficult this quarter-life crisis is. It’s a crisis, after all, because there are significant pros and cons to all available options. But I can’t help but wonder what kind of creative, innovative projects and careers Asian Americans would tackle if they weren’t confined — psychologically, financially, or culturally — to jobs they didn’t enjoy. And how much happier and more fulfilled they might be as a result.

***

Of course, I draw not only from my peers’ experiences but also my own. I grew up as a little achieving machine. My parents weren’t just Asian immigrants; they were Asian immigrants who came here to get PhDs and went on to become professors, so education was paramount in our family. The value of education (and stability it would eventually bring me) was so strong that my mom didn’t even need to be a tiger mom; by elementary school, I had so deeply internalized it that she didn’t need to do anything to motivate me to achieve. In high school, I cleaned up across the board — not only in math and science, the stereotypically Asian subjects my parents taught, but also in English and social studies. I had to be the best at everything. There was no excuse not to be.

In the midst of all this achieving, I also figured out what I wanted to study: Oddly enough, the recurring refrain of “Why are you like that? Like, the way you are?” in My So-Called Life, which I watched obsessively in 7th grade, triggered an interest in psychology. My parents were down with this, because they expected a doctorate degree, and whether it was in medicine or psychology, I would have tangible career options. So I went off to college as a psych major. Meanwhile, my Asian American friends swarmed to engineering and premed classes, spending long days in the chem lab or long nights in the computer lab, which they almost universally loathed. I toiled with them for one semester, taking multivariable calculus and organic chemistry (“to challenge myself,” I said at the time, though in retrospect, I think I just had something to prove) before retiring from all things premed. For the next 3 years, I looked at my peers with a mix of pity and smugness. They mindlessly studied what their parents wanted them to study, but I was studying something I actually liked.

I kept this chip on my shoulder for years — until I found myself midway through a PhD program and seriously questioning if I wanted to be there. I found myself in the very position for which I had judged my peers: I was pursuing a secure, well-paying career that my parents wanted for me but I wasn’t sure I wanted. Meanwhile, the people in college I smirked at for their hapless pursuit of stable careers — they were no less happy than I was, but at least they were making great money. All I was doing was accruing debt.

All of this came to a head 4 years ago, when I started the full-time internship that made up my last year of grad school, and I realized that my worst fears had come true: I had spent 5 years in school for a career I didn’t want. I had endured more classes, papers, and exams than I could count; an exhausting master’s thesis and an even more grueling dissertation; countless hours stressing about clinical hours, data analyses, internship applications, and all the other work of grad school. I was getting my first taste of what my life in this field would be like — a life I spent years doggedly pursuing — and I didn’t like it.

I was also getting my first taste of what many of my peers had been experiencing for years. Working at a job you hate SUCKS. Like, REALLY sucks. Getting up in the morning is terrible, because you’re tired and you don’t want to go to the job you loathe, and then you’re there for 8 hours — the entire time the sun is out — if not longer, and you come home and you’re exhausted and you have no time or energy to do the things you actually want to do. And you have to do this AGAIN. And AGAIN. And AGAIN. And a respite comes on Friday, if you’re not too tired to enjoy it, and then Sunday comes too quickly and you sink into your weekly funk because you have to repeat the whole cycle AGAIN. It’s like being in hell. All I ever thought about that year was my next day off, when I could maybe sneak in a sick day and just sleep….

Meanwhile, the next hoop was being placed in front of me. Announcements for post-docs started flooding my inbox almost the minute my internship started — post-docs that my peers were applying for, interviewing for, getting. There was pressure all around me to swim with the current — but could I do it if I was so, you know, unhappy with what I was doing? Could I really sign up for more of the same?

I started peeling my fingers away, one by one. I held out for half-time post-docs, which are virtually nonexistent, thinking that maybe I could do what I was trained to do part-time and use the remaining time to pursue something I actually liked. The few half-time opportunities that materialized fizzled out quickly. In the end, I was left with a gift: I did not have a job in my field. Or any job, for that matter. I had no choice but to do something else — to maybe figure out what I really wanted to do. At 28, with a PhD in a field I didn’t want to work in, I was about to embark on the task I should have started 10 years before.

***

I took a very different tack this time around: Instead of setting a long-term goal and obstinately staying the course, no matter what data I collected along the way, I would look for jobs that interested me and try them. If I liked them, I would continue; if not, I would quit. And I would see what opportunities unfolded that way. After years of meticulously planning my professional life, this strategy — one that involved working forward and not backward, in which my future would be determined by opportunities that may or may not arise — was terrifying. But it was also thrilling, like stepping onto a tightrope without a 5-year plan to catch me. And, well, I had seen how my previous strategy played out. I didn’t think I could do much worse.

So, new game plan in hand, I started my job hunt. I got an adjunct professor position at my alma mater; aside from the absurd amounts of prep work and the occasional entitled student, I found that I really enjoyed teaching, and it was a much better fit for me than clinical work. Then a friend from college asked if I would be interested in working with high school students, which I had done in undergrad and was happy to take up again. That job also led to some consulting work, which I had never done before but turned out to be right up my alley. Thus I patched together a professional life, running from meeting to class to meeting — but, in a dramatic change from the previous year, I loved going to work. Each of my jobs felt meaningful, played to my strengths, and had far more awesome moments than terrible ones. I finally got a taste for what it was like to do work that was life-giving, and it was fantastic. On top of that, I found that my satisfaction at work trickled into every other area of my life; after a year of being a zombie, I was happy, well-rested, energetic. I felt alive again.

Then, a few months ago, we had to move for my husband’s job, and I found myself back at square one. As wonderful as youth work and teaching were, I didn’t feel a strong need to continue either one. So back I went to trying-and-seeing. Two of my professors from grad school offered me a job as a consultant, helping millennials figure out what they want to do with their lives. Given my experiences, both professional (therapy, assessment, working with students, consulting) and personal (knowing intimately how it felt to end up in the wrong career and to wonder what I was doing with my life), this felt like an excellent fit — and it was, for once, something I could see myself doing long-term. I had also wanted for years to write more seriously — a desire that I had struggled to acknowledge, fearing that it sounded pretentious, frivolous, or both — and it appeared that I now had time to give that a shot. But I also needed an income as I built up these lines of work, so I looked for yet another job. I applied to work at a few independent bookstores, something I had always thought would be fun but never had the chance to try. One took a chance and hired me, even though I was both incredibly overqualified and incredibly underqualified. So I find myself splitting my time between three different gigs yet again.

And lo and behold, I am happy, for the same reasons I was in my previous trifecta of employment. Obviously, the situation isn’t perfect: I spend every day shifting between very different tasks. At the moment, I make significantly less than my peers from grad school, who are now licensed psychologists, and pretty much everyone I went to college with. My resume makes no sense at all. I’m almost 31, and I’ve made only the slightest headway into a career I want to have. But for me, all of that pales in comparison to how it feels to be doing work that I actually enjoy. After years of jumping through hoops because it was all I knew how to do, of achieving for the sake of achieving, I’m finally doing work that I find meaningful. And it feels pretty awesome. In a sharp contrast to my previous way of living, I have no idea what my life will look like in 5 years — but I’m content and fulfilled right now, and that feels like a good trade-off.

***

Now, I’m not saying that what I did is the right thing to do and that every Asian American who’s unhappy with their job should leave it immediately. I am lucky to have no student loans or house payments or children to support, to have a husband who is entirely supportive and as eager to see me in a job I love as I am, to have parents who had ample warning about this sea change and accepted it with minimal resistance, and on and on and on. I recognize that some people have children, parental demands, mortgages, and other constraints that keep them from making similar changes — and some have found a way to be content in the midst of less-than-thrilling careers. I respect that.

But in my case, I felt so dissatisfied with the path I was on that I needed to ask myself some serious questions about the choices I was making — and judging from all the conversations I’ve had in the last 10 years with other Asian Americans about their jobs, I don’t think I’m alone. I don’t think that pursuing careers that are safe and stable is a bad thing by any means; having a consistent income, health insurance, and resources to live in a safe neighborhood with good schools is nothing to sneeze at. But I worry that as a community, we hyperfocus on security and stability to the point where we don’t think to explore what could be life-giving and fulfilling for us. And as a result, a lot of us walk around not very happy with our professional lives — which is to say, for most of our waking hours — and not really knowing how to change that.

I don’t have any easy answers or one-size-fits-all solutions, but I do think we need to spend more time reflecting on our choices, both individually and collectively. And I wonder what would happen if we allowed ourselves more room to explore. I wonder what kinds of things we would pursue — and how much more fulfilled we could be.

***

A final thought: If anything here has resonated with you, I’d like to hear your story, too. If you left your career, if you decided to stay, if you’re trying to figure that out right now — what has your process been like? What’s made it hard or easy for you to make your decision? How will you advise your children, should you choose to have them? I’m super-curious to hear.

I thought at 28 years old, I’d have it all figured out. I’d be reporting in a decent sized market, living on my own and possibly engaged to the man of my dreams.

In reality, it’s entirely the opposite.

I first got into journalism because a professor told me it was a miserable career choice.

His name was Bob. He was known to mark up your papers as if someone bled all over them. If he asked you a question and you got it wrong, he would make a noise like a game show buzzer. My friends warned me about Bob. And I was scared.

Some said Bob looked like Rerun from Good Times, I personally thought he looked like Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He was tough, yet had every reason to be. I respected that and took a couple of classes with him during my junior year. Still, the way he would talk about professional journalism did scare me,

“If you want a family, forget about it!” “Say good-bye to holidays off and weekends off!” “If you want to be a reporter, you’re going to have to start off in a small market and they pay pennies!”

After all of the negative talk about my major, I decided to take an internship with a local news radio station to see if I would even like a career in journalism. Accepting that summer internship was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I was setting up interviews to be used by our anchors on air, I got to shadow reporters out in the field and basically play reporter myself. I also wrote stories that our talent actually used! It was great. My colleagues were nice and you know what? Most of them were married, had kids and had holidays off!

I realized all of that talk from Bob was nonsense! At the end, the station hired me as a production assistant. I was a 20-year-old college student working in the field I was studying.

The following summer I decided to apply for another internship, but this time in television news. I wanted to intern at the television station located in the same building as my radio job. When I went in for my interview, the internship coordinator was so impressed by my resume she offered me a job as an assignment desk assistant at the station’s San Jose bureau, which was just blocks away from my college campus.

I was feeling on-top-of-the-world. At 21, I was working in a top 5 market in both television and radio. I was also working part-time as a receptionist at a local hair salon. I graduated from college in December of 2007. About a month or two after, I began the tough process of sending out resumes and reporter reels to small markets all over the country. My thinking was to report in a small market and work my way up to the E! Network. My only fear was moving away from my life in the Bay Area to begin in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. I had a life here. Friends, family and a boyfriend. It scared me to leave, even though I knew I had to.

From February 2008 on, I received one disappointing email / letter after another. “Thank you for applying but we’ve already filled the position” and things along those lines. Don’t get me started on those awkward phone calls to news directors asking if they received my DVD. How could someone who had gotten every previous job she’d applied for, not get ANYBODY to hire her? I had an accumulative GPA of 3.66 and was a Dean’s Scholar for most of my college career. I was even a member of the academic fraternity Kappa Tau Alpha because I was that great at school. I had professional newsroom experience! And yet, NOBODY would hire me!

My boyfriend was also having a hard time finding a job. His major was finance and his grades…well, let’s just say he didn’t take college seriously. I felt he deserved to not find a job because he didn’t work as hard as I did. Of course, I let him know that. Boy, am I eating my words now.

I went to countless journalism conferences around the country, shopping my tape. Everyone said it was “good” I just needed to find experience, which would be hard as the nature of the news business was changing because of the economy.

I finally got a bite from a station in Midland-Odessa, Texas. This was the only news director to get back to me. I immediately got scared. “Here it is. I’m going to have to move.” After a couple of email exchanges, things got quiet on his end. It turns out, he was fired from the station and the station was under a hiring freeze. I was relieved and disappointed at the same time. Luckily, I was still employed at my radio, television and hair salon jobs.

However, nothing was more humiliating than when the reporters I worked with would ask, “What are you still doing here? You need to get out of California and get your first job already!” Or when clients at the salon would gasp and give me a look of shame when I’d explain to them that I was a college graduate still working there.

Years went by of sending out my reporter reel and nothing ever became of it. I got a few bites here and there, but nothing solid. I landed a job as a celebrity gossip reporter in 2009 at a small entertainment show in Sacramento, only for the show to lose funding a month later.

In the middle of my search for jobs, a friend from college was getting married in Houston. I took that opportunity to stop in Midland-Odessa to see if I really had missed out on a good opportunity there. In the spring of 2010, I paid a visit to the three stations in the area. The first station I visited was in a mall and the news director asked me if English was my second language and if I had a lot of Mexican friends back home because it sounded like I was slurring in my stories. For the record- I’m 3rd generation East-Indian, I only have one Mexican friend and English is not my second language. I speak perfect English. I would like point out the news director was Mexican himself.

The second station I visited was in a trailer in the middle of nowhere and the third station – the one I got the offer from- well, their power went out in the middle of my meeting with the new news director. After leaving Midland-Odessa, I realized it was for the best that I didn’t get the job there. I was relieved to know everything had ended up for the best.

Later in 2010, the San Jose television bureau closed. But my boss kept me on, transferring me to the station in San Francisco. In the Spring 2011, my knowledge of the beauty industry from my salon job helped me land a reporting job with the Oakland Examiner online. It’s a freelance gig that allows me to write about new beauty products.

Later that same year, I left my production assistant job to anchor / produce traffic for the radio station. Things were starting to pick up. Sure, I was anchoring from Midnight- 6am and the only people listening were my parents and my friends on their way home from the club...but at least it was in the direction I wanted to go.

In the spring of 2012 I got a laid-off from my traffic job. Later that same year I won an Associated Press Mark Twain award for my work at my television job. Things just weren’t making sense and the universe was confusing me. At that point, I felt as if I was doing something wrong. No matter how hard I tried, whenever I felt like I’d finally made it, the job wouldn’t pan out. At the same time, the steady television job that I had lukewarm feelings for, kept its loyalty to me. How did I tell it I just wanted to be friends?

In early 2013 I finally quit my receptionist job at the salon. Sure, I loved my coworkers and I got a great discount on expensive products, but the job wasn’t serving me anymore. Instead of helping me get some extra cash, it was beginning to interfere with my career. I had always believed I needed to be there for financial reasons. However, I realized later on that was just fear talking. I had spent almost 7 years at the salon and had finally come to terms that my time there had run its course.

Even though it felt right, I was scared that I no longer had that safety net. I was only going to be working at my television job. That’s it.

Interestingly enough, the day after I quit, an old colleague emailed asking me to help her on a pilot project that needed someone with reporting skills. If I hadn’t quit, I would have had to bypass that opportunity.

Currently, I’m working at my television job, but it’s not full-time. I still write for the Oakland examiner and have a celebrity gossip blog of my own. However, as I get older, the only thing I want is a full-time job with health benefits

Don’t get me wrong; working the assignment desk is exciting. You’re the heart of the newsroom. People working the assignment desk are the first to know when breaking news is happening. Something about being the first one to know the latest information is exciting! But do I see myself keeping this position for the long haul? No.

Is it full-time and am I getting benefits? Nope. Yes, sometimes I do work weekends and holidays but that isn’t even an issue anymore. Neither is moving away from my family and friends.

Since being laid off, it seems like everyone around me has gotten his or her dream job. Everyone except for me.Friends, family and coworkers have all landed the job they had been waiting for. Even my father who is in his early 60’s got a new job. He wasn’t even looking!

It was hard not be green with envy for everyone’s new venture, including my own dad’s.

For a while I’d honestly felt like I’d failed at life, but then I realized all of these trials and tribulations are pointing me in the direction I am destined to go.

Yes, it is hard to remind myself of this while perusing Facebook and other social media and seeing everyone’s highlight reel of their life.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to be a television news reporter, my passion is in entertainment news and over the years I’ve come to really enjoy social media. A career in one of the two or a combination of the two would be my ideal career choice.

Late last year I had the opportunity to work with a well-known entertainment show and help their crews get information on Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s engagement. It was weird because I happened to have the day off. It seemed like the stars-aligned perfectly.

No, I’m not working with that show right now and no, they haven’t returned any of my calls since.

But, after that experience I realized one thing. You never know what tomorrow will bring. Tomorrow I could land the job of my dreams with an awesome benefits package, or still be struggling to find said job.

It didn’t make sense. Not to anyone who had never worked in a newsroom, anyway. Most of the people in my life could not understand why I did what I did. “Andy, you get to work in television. That’s so exciting! Why would you give that up?”

Ok, that’s not the exact response I got from everyone, but that’s a pretty good representation of how people reacted when I told them I was looking for a career change. I had spent the majority of my adult life writing and producing local television news.

Yes, the job comes with excitement. Like the time I was producing the 5pm news on Christmas Day, 2007. Five minutes before I was about to leave for Christmas dinner, word broke out that a man had been mauled to death by a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo. The tiger was out of her enclosure and roaming the zoo.

So much for Christmas dinner.

Still, for all its excitement, the job was exhausting. I constantly worked nights and weekends. Being in my mid-20’s in an incredibly social city, it was difficult to maintain a social life. Not to mention the daily deadlines, the stress of putting breaking news on the air, and answering to eight bosses (ok, I didn’t actually have eight bosses, more like 4, but I had to slip an Office Space reference in somewhere).

Then it happened. I hesitate to use the term “dream job,” but for all the job postings I had read in my 32 years, this came pretty close. It even had a cool title: digital sports editor. The company was cool. Its headquarters was in a giant loft space. It had a kitchen with snacks, and beer in the fridge. Employees walked around in skinny jeans and plaid shirts with their Powerbooks, heading to meetings in conference rooms with names like "Harajuku" and "The Kremlin." And the company was going to pay me to watch sports.

I was ecstatic. After a decade in TV news, I was out. I was working with an amazing team. I was learning weird new things about sports and finally going to happy hour with coworkers after work.

I was so happy I practically forgot to use my vacation time. I accrued a sizable amount of days off, and with some friendly nudging from my manager, decided it was time for a break. A month later I found myself in Argentina, exploring Patagonia, eating empanadas and politely refusing Fernet and Cokes from locals. (It’s vile.)

For all the fun I was having, I found myself actually missing work. A quick note to my team was in order. Just to say "hi," and maybe include a picture myself on a glacier. I logged into my work email. And even though I promised myself I would not spend too much time reading work emails, one note caught my eye. It came from our CEO and was sent to the entire company. To be honest I can’t really remember what it said, or if I even read the whole thing. I do remember the gist being that some employees had lost their jobs that day. The thought never occurred to me that I might be one of them.

Guess where this is going.

After sending off the photo to my team, I went back to vacation life, drinking malbec and planning the next day's activities. Hours later, I checked my email to see what my co-workers thought of my photo. I didn't have a single response from a team of twelve. It didn’t make sense. They all should have read it by then. I didn’t have to put two and two together. G Mail did it for me. None of my team members were signed in. Layoffs.

Crap.

It was 1AM in El Calafate, Argentina. I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling. I honestly didn’t know what I was feeling. For the first time since I landed my first job in TV, I was unemployed. I also had a week left in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The first thing I had to decide was not what I was going to do with my life, but how I would live it over the next week. Money suddenly mattered a lot more. Argentina was not an expensive country, but I wouldn't call it cheap either. There were still so many things I wanted to do that required money. Rock climbing, steak dinners, soccer games.

Eff it. I told myself in 20 years I wouldn't regret racking up more credit card debt at 33. But I would regret not climbing that mountain in Patagonia when I had the chance.

A week later I was back home in San Francisco. After fighting my way through some red tape, my severance came through. Two weeks pay. Awesome. I would also qualify for unemployment. Still $450 a week doesn’t go too far when you live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

At that point I was less concerned about money and more concerned with figuring out what I would be doing next with my life. News is pretty specific. And after only eight months as sports editor at a startup, I didn’t exactly have a background that fed to a lot of obvious opportunities. Worst-case-scenario I could tuck my tail between my legs and crawl back to news. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I knew I didn’t want that.

I had almost no idea where to start. All I could think about were those words everyone is fed from the time they’re old enough to flip their first burger; “Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life." There’s no doubt value to that philosophy, though it’s not always easy to manifest the things we really love into something that pays the bills.

With that in mind, I skipped the whole income part and decided to just do the things I loved for a while. I went rock-climbing. I ran. I dog-sat for all my friends. I was confident life would work itself out. Sure, I spent an hour or two every day browsing job boards, sending out my resume, and networking, but I lacked any real direction.

The weeks soon became months. My savings got smaller and smaller. I started to worry, not just about money but about the growing gap in my resume. The first month I was just a victim of downsizing. By month five I was a guy who had been unsuccessfully job-hunting for nearly half a year.

I overhauled my resume more times than I can remember. Paragraphs. Bullets. Videos. I tried them all. Every now and then I got phone interviews. The first one led to an in-person interview at a PR firm. The office had no life. It was boring. The job sounded dull. I was convinced I nailed the interview and was worried I would have to decide between a boring job, or the continued job search. So much for confidence. I didn’t get the job.

By month seven, I seriously started considering a return to TV news. Freelance jobs were relatively easy to come by if you had any experience.

This is the part where I want to tell you I had the revelation. That I fell into a key piece of information that opened the door to where I am now. I wish I could tell you that, but to be honest, it was just dumb luck.

One morning I was browsing one of the usual job boards, using one of my usual search terms: “sports" when I spotted it. Honestly, neither the job nor the title (Business Development Associate) stood out to me. I had never heard of the company. It was a technology company with a focus on sports.

The job required two years of sales experience. I had none, unless you count the three months after college I spent selling security systems door-to-door to fund my post-college Europe trip. But I was in luck. At the bottom of the requirements was “Experience/knowledge with the high school recruiting process preferred." I had that. Getting recruited to row in college had proven beneficial several times before. And now it would help me land a job.

It wasn’t long before I found myself in an in-person interview. The office was small. It seemed quiet, but everyone was around my age and friendly. Maybe even more importantly, nearly all of them were former college athletes. We all knew what it was like to wake up at 5:30 am for practice, go to class, then be back for weights in the afternoon. Everyone loved sports. The role was not what I had imagined for myself seven months prior, but it presented a challenge along with a product I could relate to. It made sense.

It’s been nearly four months now and I can honestly say I’m happy in my new role. I’m learning a new skill which will be valuable in nearly any job I take in the future. Do I love every moment of every day in the office? No, but I don't think that would be a realistic expectation. But I love my co-workers and I really look forward to going to work everyday.

I wish this could be a guide for people stuck in a job search, or even a good example of what not to do. Maybe it’s a little of both. I probably don’t have a solid resolution because deep down I’d still like to find that dream job. But I like to believe it's the ups and downs we experience in our careers that helps us get there.